AN EXTRAORDINARY CRIME.

Dominion, Volume 5, Issue 1377, 1 March 1912, Page 5

AN EXTRAORDINARY CRIME.

MONK MURDERS HIS BROTHER. Oy Telegraph—Press Association—Copyrlehi St. Petersburg, February 28. There are (>. hundred witnesses in the trial of three monks of Czonstochowa, who are charged with murder and sacrilege in 1909. The chief prisoner is Father Damasius Macoch, whom tho Pope excommunicated Bonie time ago. He confesses that he murdered his cousin, Vaclar Macoch, and sold the jewels stolen from the Church of the Monnstery of St. Paul the Hermit, fearing the cousin would divulge the plot. The cousin's body, sewn inside a eofa, was found in a river. BROTHER STRANGLED IN UNDERGROUND CELL. Father Mamnsius Mncoch, a Polish monk for whom the police of Germany, Austria, and Russia had been searching, was arrested in October, 1910, and confessed to tho murder of his brother—a postman—and to the robbery of jewels from the famous image of thq Virgin and Child at tho church at Czestochowa, Russian Poland. The jewels missing from the image, to which are ascribed miraculous powers and which is visited annually by some .100,000 Poles, are stated to be worth JCOO.OOO. The bodv of the monk's brother was found inside a sofa which had been thrown in the river Wart.i. His widow, with whom the monk disappeared, was also arrested. In his confession Macoch stated that lie enticed his brother into an underground cell. There he gave him drugged wine, struck him on the head, and then hastily confessed him. After granting him full absolution he strangled him with both hands.

The monk volunteered a statement respecting alleged malpractices in the- Czestochowa Monastery, to which lie was attached. Hβ says that of the jewels sewn in the Virgin's robe many were not genuine. The monks had disposed of the original gems and substituted artificial stones long ago as ho discovered when he attempted to sell them. He said that the monks regularly appropriated the votive offerings of the pilgrims. He himself had taken hundreds and squandered tho proceeds on his sister-in-law.

As a result of the revelations the monastery was occupied by the military, and a thorough search was mado behind walls, under floors, and in tho garden in tho hope of discovering the real jewels. _ An incalculable number of pilgrims have visited tho shrine in tho past COO years—the image has been at Czestochowa since 1382—and the innumerable gifts included priceless offerings from popes, emperors, and kings.